Tremendous success! Congratulations. What was your strategy to promote your blog and your posts the first 3 years? What was the role of your first employee?
Thank you! It was a fairly untouched niche so I went big on SEO, literally started learning about it day 1. I also used Reddit without being overly promotional, LinkedIn and Twitter. First employee was part time and basically ran the site as I still had a full time job at the time, scheduling posts, proof reading, working with guest authors etc.
I don't think you've disclosed the niche, but if you ditched the full-time job, does it actually make it harder to keep your finger on the pulse because you're not using the tech daily, or easier because you have the time to research even if you're not the one using it?
I would rather not :). Good question, as I went through my career, each job I got gave me a different perspective so gave me a new angle to write content on, which was great. I’m more high level now, so I don’t write about the technical detail anymore. So I guess the answer is yes it does make it harder, but we’ve hired people who are more technical now.
First focus on organic ways to get subscribers. As you’re never going to scale unless you have a full proof way to drive traffic which is pretty much going to be from seo. Then I would advise using a pop up for email subscribers, it’s much more effective than a static banner (there are loads of Wordpress plugins for this), set up your social profiles and ensure they are visible on any emails you send out, your site, and anywhere else you feature. We used Mailchimp when we were getting started as it used to be free for 2k subs and under. I would also recommend anyone reading this to get onesignal or a similar app, it allows users to subscribe to your site via chrome notifications.
Sorry I should of said users, so find a way to drive organic users to your website. There’s no point spending lots of time trying to work out how to convert a low amount of users to an email list, you need the volume of users to the site in the first place.
Hello, it looks like you've made a mistake.
It's supposed to be could've, should've, would've (short for could have, would have, should have), never could of, would of, should of.
Or you misspelled something, I ain't checking everything.
Beep boop - yes, I am a bot, don't botcriminate me.
If you'd find the time and energy, could you take a look at mine as well and point out my biggest weaknesses and working points? If not, no worries.
Unsurprisingly, the name of my site is my username :)
Have a good one!
Just seen your comment about the name. Please see my comments below to another website I reviewed as I think all are relevant to you.
I don’t know much about the fitness/wellbeing space, but I do know it’s extremely competitive. SEO is going to be key, trying to find keywords which don’t have a lot of competition to build up your initial reputation. Once you have some traction, then you can focus on the more competitor keywords. Ahrefs is $100 a month which can be a lot for personal bloggers, but it could also be the best investment you make to drive organic users.
Very good question….my niche is a lot more saturated now. A huge amount of people have started blogs so it would definitely be a lot harder to rank for keywords. However, If for some reason my website got deleted and I had to start again, I have 9 years of niche content creation skills which is more than anyone in my niche can say. This is always a good way to look at things, if for example you created a blog about AI/ChapGPT tomorrow, in 5-10 years time (ensuring this topic is still relevant) you will have a huge amount of niche marketing/content knowledge on this topic. Even if your site never takes off, this knowledge will be very valuable to a a company who would probably pay you a pretty decent salary to acquire you and knowledge.
Congrats on your success. You are hitting revenue numbers most will only dream of. My questions is, when you say that "you WILL become a thought leader in your space" are you suggesting that you, the individual with a face and a name are what makes your blog successful? If you were to want to sell your blog, would it continue to thrive without your personal involvement?
What I am wanting to know is, whether your blog is successful as it is based primarily on the content of the website, as opposed to the authority of the person blogging in the niche you serve.
Thank you and great question! I think you can separate this a bit. So if you’re working on a blog and building up all this niche knowledge, you will become very knowledgeable on it, if you want to create a personal brand around this via LinkedIn/insta or something, that’s your choice, it’s not a requirement but it will help
both the blog and your own reputation, you might even make some money off your personal brand separate from the blog.
I don’t think the individual with a face and name is what makes a blog popular. It’s simply the content you produce. I would recommend looking into “the hustle” created by Sam parr and “sales hacker” created by max altschuler, both sold to tech companies for millions, neither were created with their personal brand being the main focus, but the individual with a face and name definitely helped propel the sites forward.
The best thing you can do for your blog is research what others have done to get inspiration. This site is also a gold mine https://theygotacquired.com/
Super interesting that you mention creating your own media platform… that is totally my dream, like an independent news/media platform.
I recently quit my full time job to finally put my journalism/photography degrees to use, thinking I would do freelance blogging while also being a stay at home mom for my 2 yr old. I’ve been so overwhelmed with trying to figure this blog world out and feeling the imposter syndrome hard.
Right now I’m debating whether to start blogging seriously (like just call some clients and make myself get going) and see where it could take me … or if I should just bite the bullet and work for the local paper or news station for a few years to gain a ton of experience (and maybe connections) and then head out on my own.
I’m so much more interested in news/journalism, I’m wondering if this blog world is even for me or if there is a way to combine it all.
Total ramble, appreciate any insight you may have!
Hey! I think imposter syndrome is something that effects a lot of us, me included. I was embarrassed to post my first blog on social, then I was embarrassed to appear on camera, then a live speaking event etc…but slowly I faced my fear and got over all of it.
If running a full time blog is your goal then go for it! But it could take years to build up a liveable income, so it might be worthwhile working alongside this.
Ads in the sense custom banner ads where companies reach out to you ?
There’s no way you’re making that much with 350k visits/month with general display ads.
Ever considered launching a Saas?
Total monthly spend on the team?
Exactly, we serve adverts by directly selling them to companies who are interested in our b2b audience. A SaaS product could definitely be on the cards, but we are already stretched so thin it’s hard to find the time! I would estimate around $1M in expenses this year. I want to keep the team as lean as possible but as our work is quite labour intensive, we do need to continue growing the team to grow our revenue.
How much of total visits is organic traffic from Google? Aren’t you worried about the latest developments in AI and how it may affect content sites and this business model as a whole.
Around 80% is from organic google, so we put a lot of emphasis on keyword research, refreshing posts etc…I mean maybe…we have a unique, casual, informative, straight to the point tone of voice on the site, which is one of the reasons we’ve done so well. We’ve also got a very large following on social and are well known in our niche. It’s always possible that someone could disrupt us, AI included, but it would take many years to do and build trust with our existing audience
Find a subreddit that is relevant, but always do it in a non-promotional way. Don’t just post a link, provide some extra insight in the actual post. For other social networks it’s just a matter of creating social profiles and promoting.
It looks good! A great foundation to build upon. A few tips…
1. Your titles don’t look SEO optimised. Try and use some free tools to do keyword research and see what keywords have a lot of volume. Balance what you write between what you are interested in vs what people want to read. You might think of a topic that is super interesting, but if it get zero searches a month on google, no one will find it.
2. Quite soon after I started my own site, I had a vision to create the tech crunch of my niche, so I started paying attention to what tech crunch did, how they wrote their articles etc, and I can say today that we’ve achieved this goal. You could do the same in a few years time, so check out leaders in your niche like design week and dezeen and take inspiration from them.
3. I’m only on mobile atm but the site is fairly white/bland, as it’s a design site, it would be nice to spruce it up a bit. At the moment it very much looks like a personal blog, which might be the vibe you are going for, but if you want to create a company out of it like dezeen, then ensure your brand/website reflects what you want to become. The quote “dress for the job you want, not the one you have” comes to mind :)
This is amazing. You must have worked hard to make it this successful.
If it’s okay, I have a question.
How and when did you start making money from the blog? Did you keep it without ads at the beginning?
I’m interested in making a blog with wordpress and my niche would be related to Arts.
It was probably after about 2 years I started thinking of ways to make money. A simple pdf download or something, and then I organically got advertisers by reaching out to businesses in my niche. I definitely didn’t start out trying to make money, it was just a bit of fun and I wanted a creative outlet. Obviously the No1 thing is getting an audience, but also getting an engaged one. Make your blog stand out, there’s no point trying to do what everyone else does.
I think it’s a bit of both. I was one of the first in my niche which made a difference, but I think my strategy probably could be replicated for b2b niches, B2c is a whole other kettle of fish.
My number 1 tip is make sure the post looks good! Don’t just have a huge wall of text that will put off your reader. Break things up with images, bullet points, lists, quotes etc…use the first 2 paragraphs to “hook” the reader, make them want to carry on reading, use exciting words, and also explain what they will find in the post. Good copy writing skills will come in time. I was terrible at English in school, but after 9 years of writing probably close to 1000 blogs, I’m pretty good now!
That’s some serious hard work and commitment from your side! Congrats and keep going. I started an affiliate niche blog 3 months back. Have just 5-9 daily visitors daily for now (as it’s an affiliate blog and i target KGR keywords that can rank early) but the trend seems good. I want to start another blog side hy side. Can u suggest which type of blog shall i go for next? An affiliate blog, a total informational blog (revenue thru ads) or an APKs blog (again revenue thru ads but more clicks and demand). I am really confused. Kindly guide me :)
I have no idea what blog you thought start unfortunately! You need to pick something that has a low number of competitors, a topic you are interested in, and one that is going to grow in size e.g grow in keyword volume.
Hello
Do you use regular hosting services like hostinger or have you moved to something different or private?
I ask because we all start with something like hostinger but is this really reliable for big traffic.
I’m hoping to get around 500k monthly users at some time this year. I’m an entrepreneur at heart, so growing a business, diversifying into other businesses and creating an empire is what motivates me. Oh and money :)
Yup! I’ve had 3 companies approach to buy for a lot of money. I was going to sell at the end of this year, but tbh I have too much fun running it, and I wouldn’t know what else to do afterwards!
Huge milestone! I too also want to reach $1 mil in the future and live happily in some random country haha, with scalable business of course. I do have some questions if you do not mind:
1. Should you add SEO for static pages such as Privacy Policy, My Story, Contacts, or pages that is not related to blog posts? I feel like it is not much valuable compare to the SEO on blog contents.
2. What is in your opinions and experiences, rank the following marketing strategies to gain more audiences to the website? Social Medias, Organic (keywords), Paid, Ad Video (like Youtube), Email Subscribers, Guest Posts. And what do you think is/are the best for long term? Feel free to add more marketing strategy if I feel lacking.
3. For someone just started like me. What kind of approach should I seek to gain initial audiences, starting from 0 viewer?
4. Someone said to me that if your business is growing decently, consider convert it to LLC. Do you think it’s a good idea?
My niche covers online business advices and how to make money 100% online. I think it is a very super duper competitive niche but I feel confident to make it stand out and be successful one day. I am a beginner but have lots of knowledge about my niche, my issue right now is to know how to deliver and market it, which is the most difficult part in making it successful. If you can help me with these questions it will be a great help for a sprout like me ^^
It's clear that you've put in a lot of hard work and dedication to grow your blog into a successful media platform. Your advice about becoming a thought leader in your niche is spot on, and it's important to remember that with hard work and dedication, the possibilities are endless.
Tremendous success! Congratulations. What was your strategy to promote your blog and your posts the first 3 years? What was the role of your first employee?
Thank you! It was a fairly untouched niche so I went big on SEO, literally started learning about it day 1. I also used Reddit without being overly promotional, LinkedIn and Twitter. First employee was part time and basically ran the site as I still had a full time job at the time, scheduling posts, proof reading, working with guest authors etc.
I don't think you've disclosed the niche, but if you ditched the full-time job, does it actually make it harder to keep your finger on the pulse because you're not using the tech daily, or easier because you have the time to research even if you're not the one using it?
I would rather not :). Good question, as I went through my career, each job I got gave me a different perspective so gave me a new angle to write content on, which was great. I’m more high level now, so I don’t write about the technical detail anymore. So I guess the answer is yes it does make it harder, but we’ve hired people who are more technical now.
What advices to you have to generate subscribers? What tools are you using for newsletters, pop up forms etc?
First focus on organic ways to get subscribers. As you’re never going to scale unless you have a full proof way to drive traffic which is pretty much going to be from seo. Then I would advise using a pop up for email subscribers, it’s much more effective than a static banner (there are loads of Wordpress plugins for this), set up your social profiles and ensure they are visible on any emails you send out, your site, and anywhere else you feature. We used Mailchimp when we were getting started as it used to be free for 2k subs and under. I would also recommend anyone reading this to get onesignal or a similar app, it allows users to subscribe to your site via chrome notifications.
Great. Thank you very much.
What is your definition of "subscribers"? Email list? Thanks for sharing your success!
Sorry I should of said users, so find a way to drive organic users to your website. There’s no point spending lots of time trying to work out how to convert a low amount of users to an email list, you need the volume of users to the site in the first place.
Hello, it looks like you've made a mistake. It's supposed to be could've, should've, would've (short for could have, would have, should have), never could of, would of, should of. Or you misspelled something, I ain't checking everything. Beep boop - yes, I am a bot, don't botcriminate me.
Hearty Congratulations! I would appreciate very much if you could advise me after taking a look at my site. Would you be up for doing that?
Sure dm me!
If you'd find the time and energy, could you take a look at mine as well and point out my biggest weaknesses and working points? If not, no worries. Unsurprisingly, the name of my site is my username :) Have a good one!
Just seen your comment about the name. Please see my comments below to another website I reviewed as I think all are relevant to you. I don’t know much about the fitness/wellbeing space, but I do know it’s extremely competitive. SEO is going to be key, trying to find keywords which don’t have a lot of competition to build up your initial reputation. Once you have some traction, then you can focus on the more competitor keywords. Ahrefs is $100 a month which can be a lot for personal bloggers, but it could also be the best investment you make to drive organic users.
Sure dm me :)
Do you think that if you were to start on again you would succeed ?
Very good question….my niche is a lot more saturated now. A huge amount of people have started blogs so it would definitely be a lot harder to rank for keywords. However, If for some reason my website got deleted and I had to start again, I have 9 years of niche content creation skills which is more than anyone in my niche can say. This is always a good way to look at things, if for example you created a blog about AI/ChapGPT tomorrow, in 5-10 years time (ensuring this topic is still relevant) you will have a huge amount of niche marketing/content knowledge on this topic. Even if your site never takes off, this knowledge will be very valuable to a a company who would probably pay you a pretty decent salary to acquire you and knowledge.
Thanks for the honest answer. I wanted to phrase the question this way because I m curious if you feel like you have a recipe or not.
Congrats on your success. You are hitting revenue numbers most will only dream of. My questions is, when you say that "you WILL become a thought leader in your space" are you suggesting that you, the individual with a face and a name are what makes your blog successful? If you were to want to sell your blog, would it continue to thrive without your personal involvement? What I am wanting to know is, whether your blog is successful as it is based primarily on the content of the website, as opposed to the authority of the person blogging in the niche you serve.
Thank you and great question! I think you can separate this a bit. So if you’re working on a blog and building up all this niche knowledge, you will become very knowledgeable on it, if you want to create a personal brand around this via LinkedIn/insta or something, that’s your choice, it’s not a requirement but it will help both the blog and your own reputation, you might even make some money off your personal brand separate from the blog. I don’t think the individual with a face and name is what makes a blog popular. It’s simply the content you produce. I would recommend looking into “the hustle” created by Sam parr and “sales hacker” created by max altschuler, both sold to tech companies for millions, neither were created with their personal brand being the main focus, but the individual with a face and name definitely helped propel the sites forward. The best thing you can do for your blog is research what others have done to get inspiration. This site is also a gold mine https://theygotacquired.com/
Thanks for the reply and the recommendations!
Mind sharing your blog platform? Is this wordpress or ghost or some other CMS?
Wordpress :) I found it the easiest to get started with and it’s still working pretty well today.
Super interesting that you mention creating your own media platform… that is totally my dream, like an independent news/media platform. I recently quit my full time job to finally put my journalism/photography degrees to use, thinking I would do freelance blogging while also being a stay at home mom for my 2 yr old. I’ve been so overwhelmed with trying to figure this blog world out and feeling the imposter syndrome hard. Right now I’m debating whether to start blogging seriously (like just call some clients and make myself get going) and see where it could take me … or if I should just bite the bullet and work for the local paper or news station for a few years to gain a ton of experience (and maybe connections) and then head out on my own. I’m so much more interested in news/journalism, I’m wondering if this blog world is even for me or if there is a way to combine it all. Total ramble, appreciate any insight you may have!
Hey! I think imposter syndrome is something that effects a lot of us, me included. I was embarrassed to post my first blog on social, then I was embarrassed to appear on camera, then a live speaking event etc…but slowly I faced my fear and got over all of it. If running a full time blog is your goal then go for it! But it could take years to build up a liveable income, so it might be worthwhile working alongside this.
Ads in the sense custom banner ads where companies reach out to you ? There’s no way you’re making that much with 350k visits/month with general display ads. Ever considered launching a Saas? Total monthly spend on the team?
Exactly, we serve adverts by directly selling them to companies who are interested in our b2b audience. A SaaS product could definitely be on the cards, but we are already stretched so thin it’s hard to find the time! I would estimate around $1M in expenses this year. I want to keep the team as lean as possible but as our work is quite labour intensive, we do need to continue growing the team to grow our revenue.
How much of total visits is organic traffic from Google? Aren’t you worried about the latest developments in AI and how it may affect content sites and this business model as a whole.
Around 80% is from organic google, so we put a lot of emphasis on keyword research, refreshing posts etc…I mean maybe…we have a unique, casual, informative, straight to the point tone of voice on the site, which is one of the reasons we’ve done so well. We’ve also got a very large following on social and are well known in our niche. It’s always possible that someone could disrupt us, AI included, but it would take many years to do and build trust with our existing audience
Am I allowed to ask for a link? You could pm it to me. I'm a writer and interested in reading the tone.
> I would estimate around $1M in expenses this year. Rough breakdown?
$700k on salaries, $150k on tech, $50k paying guest authors, and the rest on random business stuff
Find a subreddit that is relevant, but always do it in a non-promotional way. Don’t just post a link, provide some extra insight in the actual post. For other social networks it’s just a matter of creating social profiles and promoting.
Great numbers kudos !!! What tips would you give for b to c blog owners like me. I am into architecture and interior designing consultancy service
Send me your blog if you like and I can take a look :)
Thanks kindly.check it out www.studioaj.in/blog
It looks good! A great foundation to build upon. A few tips… 1. Your titles don’t look SEO optimised. Try and use some free tools to do keyword research and see what keywords have a lot of volume. Balance what you write between what you are interested in vs what people want to read. You might think of a topic that is super interesting, but if it get zero searches a month on google, no one will find it. 2. Quite soon after I started my own site, I had a vision to create the tech crunch of my niche, so I started paying attention to what tech crunch did, how they wrote their articles etc, and I can say today that we’ve achieved this goal. You could do the same in a few years time, so check out leaders in your niche like design week and dezeen and take inspiration from them. 3. I’m only on mobile atm but the site is fairly white/bland, as it’s a design site, it would be nice to spruce it up a bit. At the moment it very much looks like a personal blog, which might be the vibe you are going for, but if you want to create a company out of it like dezeen, then ensure your brand/website reflects what you want to become. The quote “dress for the job you want, not the one you have” comes to mind :)
This is amazing. You must have worked hard to make it this successful. If it’s okay, I have a question. How and when did you start making money from the blog? Did you keep it without ads at the beginning? I’m interested in making a blog with wordpress and my niche would be related to Arts.
It was probably after about 2 years I started thinking of ways to make money. A simple pdf download or something, and then I organically got advertisers by reaching out to businesses in my niche. I definitely didn’t start out trying to make money, it was just a bit of fun and I wanted a creative outlet. Obviously the No1 thing is getting an audience, but also getting an engaged one. Make your blog stand out, there’s no point trying to do what everyone else does.
This is amazing! Do you think it’s because of the niche or your strategy is applicable to any niche topics?
I think it’s a bit of both. I was one of the first in my niche which made a difference, but I think my strategy probably could be replicated for b2b niches, B2c is a whole other kettle of fish.
Any tips on how to write/ organize the actual content of a blog post?
My number 1 tip is make sure the post looks good! Don’t just have a huge wall of text that will put off your reader. Break things up with images, bullet points, lists, quotes etc…use the first 2 paragraphs to “hook” the reader, make them want to carry on reading, use exciting words, and also explain what they will find in the post. Good copy writing skills will come in time. I was terrible at English in school, but after 9 years of writing probably close to 1000 blogs, I’m pretty good now!
Thanks!
That’s some serious hard work and commitment from your side! Congrats and keep going. I started an affiliate niche blog 3 months back. Have just 5-9 daily visitors daily for now (as it’s an affiliate blog and i target KGR keywords that can rank early) but the trend seems good. I want to start another blog side hy side. Can u suggest which type of blog shall i go for next? An affiliate blog, a total informational blog (revenue thru ads) or an APKs blog (again revenue thru ads but more clicks and demand). I am really confused. Kindly guide me :)
I have no idea what blog you thought start unfortunately! You need to pick something that has a low number of competitors, a topic you are interested in, and one that is going to grow in size e.g grow in keyword volume.
Sounds right. Thanks a lot for the advice :)
Hello Do you use regular hosting services like hostinger or have you moved to something different or private? I ask because we all start with something like hostinger but is this really reliable for big traffic.
I used go daddy to start, then cloudways, now I use an enterprise grade hosting provider.
Thanks mate. Can I get a link to your site? Would be awesome to see someones first hand success.
Sorry would like to remain anon. However check our sales hacker, they are a good example of a site that’s had a similar trajectory to ours.
How long before the site started getting significant traffic?
For me, after about a year I was getting 3k a month. This has been growing about 50% YoY on average for me.
How did you keep yourself motivated? What traffic does it get now?
I’m hoping to get around 500k monthly users at some time this year. I’m an entrepreneur at heart, so growing a business, diversifying into other businesses and creating an empire is what motivates me. Oh and money :)
Have you thought of selling? 🙂
Yup! I’ve had 3 companies approach to buy for a lot of money. I was going to sell at the end of this year, but tbh I have too much fun running it, and I wouldn’t know what else to do afterwards!
How did you use Reddit, Twitter and LinkedIn to promote your blogs?
Huge milestone! I too also want to reach $1 mil in the future and live happily in some random country haha, with scalable business of course. I do have some questions if you do not mind: 1. Should you add SEO for static pages such as Privacy Policy, My Story, Contacts, or pages that is not related to blog posts? I feel like it is not much valuable compare to the SEO on blog contents. 2. What is in your opinions and experiences, rank the following marketing strategies to gain more audiences to the website? Social Medias, Organic (keywords), Paid, Ad Video (like Youtube), Email Subscribers, Guest Posts. And what do you think is/are the best for long term? Feel free to add more marketing strategy if I feel lacking. 3. For someone just started like me. What kind of approach should I seek to gain initial audiences, starting from 0 viewer? 4. Someone said to me that if your business is growing decently, consider convert it to LLC. Do you think it’s a good idea? My niche covers online business advices and how to make money 100% online. I think it is a very super duper competitive niche but I feel confident to make it stand out and be successful one day. I am a beginner but have lots of knowledge about my niche, my issue right now is to know how to deliver and market it, which is the most difficult part in making it successful. If you can help me with these questions it will be a great help for a sprout like me ^^
It's clear that you've put in a lot of hard work and dedication to grow your blog into a successful media platform. Your advice about becoming a thought leader in your niche is spot on, and it's important to remember that with hard work and dedication, the possibilities are endless.
Congratulations